Today Extracellular, a cultivated meat-focused contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), announced the availability of low-cost and license-free cell banks for research to cultivated meat developers in the UK. The banks of primary cells will be made available to early-stage cultivated meat researchers and startups via funding from StartupUK and through a collaboration with Mutus, another UK startup focused on low-cost inputs for cultivated meat growth media.
Animal primary cells relevant for cultivated meat research are typically not only expensive and often of poor quality, but usually have limited information about their performance or provenance. Their use is also limited due to stringent licensing and commercial agreement requirements. Extracellular aims to address these barriers by providing animal primary cells suitable for cultivated meat research and development at up to 90% cheaper than other cell line providers and free from licensing restrictions.
From the announcement:
The cell banks initially offer cells isolated from the fat, muscle, and bone marrow tissues of cow, pig and lamb. Information on the cells’ provenance, from the age, breed, and sex of the animal, to the passage numbers and expected population doubling times, will be included with each batch. More animal species and tissue types will be made available in the future.
This move comes as more researchers and activists in the cultivated meat and future food space call for more open access to shared resources to accelerate development. Startups in the cultivated meat space typically hold their intellectual property close to the vest, but as venture capitalists have become more reticent about the space, there’s a growing realization in the community that some level of open-source-ish behavior will be required if the industry to continue to move forward and ultimately make a meaningful contribution in reducing industrial agriculture and its associated climate impacts.
New Harvest’s Isha Datar, who has been pushing for open access to cell ag (her group launched OpenCellAg last summer in partnership with CULT Food Science), emphasized this in her comments on the initiative: “Despite the venture capital and startup environment, there are many fundamental aspects of cellular agriculture that can (and must) be solved collectively. The efforts of Will Milligan and the team at Extracellular to share resources at low cost to equip and empower researchers to build a body of work is commendable leadership. In the near term, we need to go beyond traditional academia to build foundational work in this space; this type of initiative from the private sector is exactly what cellular agriculture needs. We need a culture of sharing and open science if we are to move this field forward. Too much depends on it.”
Cell banks will be made available starting next month to UK-based startups.
